Polly and Digory Return - Part 2: Your dearest, bravely yours, ever
by Glenstorm63
Summary: This single-chapter "interlogue", reflects on Digory and Polly's past personal lives, plans, loves and identities. Perhaps foreshadowing some of the tasks and adventures they may now face, having returned as youthful people with all the experience of loss following the Great War. The world is full of endless possibilities. Fanfiction gives room to explore some of them.


**Your dearest, bravely yours, ever…**

…

When Digory had been twenty six, he had completed his Master of Letters at Oxford and became a tutor and occasional lecturer in Classics. Buried in study for years, he had remained a lonely and socially backward person and it was now only his tutoring work that gave him the interaction that he so desperately needed.

So it was, that one day fate dealt Digory an interesting hand when we went visiting in the library of a neighbouring college that he had come across another young man, head bent over his books, thick black hair tousled, and several pages of notes scattered haphazardly across the table.

Digory had settled to the other side, a thick green leather tome gently lowered and opened to the index. At the time, Digory was researching a fascinating and obscure piece of literature that he was using to prepare a lecture on Spartan military philosophy.

But try as he might, he could not bring himself to concentrate. The presence of his neighbour was a distraction and he found himself staging head scratchings and staring at high windows for long moments so he could shift his gaze to cross his neighbour and get a better glance.

It was on one of these quick passes that he suddenly noticed that the young man was jolly well staring at him! Digory was mortified.

The young man reached across and thrust his hand at Digory. "The name's Robert. Robert Pearson."

Digory flushed and only managed a mumbled reply before a late rally. He grasped the hand and shook it, then stammered,

"I, I, I'm Digory Kirke. Classics and Ethics", he added to fill the gap of his nervousness.

This Robert Pearson's gaze was intense and disarming. His dark brown eyes seemed to look right into Digory and Digory found himself sinking into their inky depths… and flushing again. He was not sure where to look.

Robert's hand finally withdrew. "Commerce and Law", he said formally.

But he added, "I've noticed you about. I wondered when we would have the chance to speak, and here you are right across the table from me. I must say, old boy, you seem like a hard one to get to know."

For poor Digory, this was all too provoking, but what was to be said anyway?

So instead of retrieving his belongings and beating a hasty retreat, he just stared helplessly back and picked his fingers under the large desk.

First Robert laughed quietly, but then his expression shifted and he said kindly, "I am sorry, I really didn't mean to embarrass you. It is just that there are so many fellows about here who seem to be consumed with drinking and finding girls, and getting engaged that when you notice the ones who are not, it really is rather refreshing."

It turned out that Robert was in his final year at the neighbouring college and had come to use this wing of this library for his own research. Digory and Robert became very good friends rather quickly and soon were the closest of companions and were almost inseparable in their spare time.

For Digory, the advent of this understanding that they developed was a revelation. It was on a trip on the train down to Dorset that they first kissed, in the middle of an empty train compartment. It was daring and stirring and tantalisingly sinful, but apart from Digory's special moments as a child with Aslan and Polly and the Apple for his Mother Mabel, there was nothing as an adult which had ever felt just so right! How could this much joy and surrender ever be considered a sin? Digory's intellectual powers were on fire with the issue.

Robert was a little more experienced at this sort of thing but he was so respectful and so sensitive and exercised restraint with such charm, that Digory could not but fall in love with him even more.

It was young love after a long delay. Whenever one was further afield, they corresponded several times a week and swore undying fidelity.

But life, family demands and social attitudes such as they were, the (relatively recent) case about Oscar Wilde and the need to get money in, took their toll. Robert came from Alderley on the edge of Manchester and his family looked darkly upon Digory, despite his clumsy attempts to charm them. They seemed to know instinctively their own son's inclinations and did all they could to draw Robert back to the north for a stable career as a merchant lawyer and a marriage to a sensible young woman.

On the other hand, Mabel and Alexander were always happy to entertain a friend of their precious son. Robert was included as one of the family for two years and often came to stay and he got along famously with Polly as well when they finally met.

And Mabel could not remain ignorant of the source of her renewed life. The memory of Digory's arrival in her sad room in the row house in Camden with the strangely glowing Apple and her strange hunger for it, until she fell asleep, remained with her vividly. It all felt like a dream but she knew in her heart it was not. On several occasions since this event, she had been prompted to ask more deeply into the Apple's origins and surrounding events and as she had drummed into Digory to always be honest and tell the truth, he could not keep it a secret from her. Initially Mabel had been rather puzzled by Digory's quiet maintenance of the unlikely fanciful story and went along with it merely to humour him. But when she and Alexander had questioned Polly about it all over breakfast one morning down in Dorset and much the same story came tumbling out, they really had to accept it on face value. The story was too rich and too consistent to have been made up by a young boy or a young girl. Alexander and Mabel were also acutely aware of elder brother Andrew's former interest in the occult and had met Andrew's hard-faced god-mother on more than one occasion in years past. Mabel had always been glad she had escaped that kind of patronage.

And it all made her doubly aware of her son's special status and thus she had more room to embrace his choices in life. She had gained a second life at his hand and could not be jealous of his life's loves. The only things she was worried about was the potential for prejudice and bigotry… and of course the potential that she would never see grandchildren. But maybe that was the price of the miracle that her son had delivered to her…

So she advised caution and restraint but appealed to him to honour and return love when it was genuinely given in return. And with that she was at peace.

…

When Polly had heard about Robert Pearson, she had been thrilled for Digory and made sure she came down to Oxford to meet Robert. The thing about Polly was that you knew you could depend on her to keep mum about all the right things without explaining. She had brought down her friend Violet who was even more inscrutable and droll and the foursome of Digs, Robs, Moll and Vi had joined Mabel and Alexander in the most riotous fun the house had seen since Digory and Polly were 12.

They danced to the gramophone and sang songs around the piano and discussed the problems of the world with great passion and verve and good humour. The world was looking up and moving on from the long stultifying years of Queen Victoria and her stuffy advisors!

The foursome were even considering a double wedding "sometime in the future" as "an arrangement of convenience" and all living together at the house in Dorset. And perhaps a house in Oxford too with the sale of the two houses in Camden. Mabel and Alexander would have loved it. They might have even managed children. It could have worked. It should have worked.

But then Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and the events of the Great War unfolded and all their dreams destroyed.

Digory was sent to Egypt and then on to the Dardanelles. His battalion was obliterated and less than a tenth came back home. Digory escaped with shrapnel wounds to the calf muscle on his left leg and his chin, which was why he always grew a beard in later years.

Robert was not so lucky. Just before they were sent their separate ways, Digory had sworn to Robert that when it was all over Robert should come and live with him in Dorset and help run the estate with him; regardless of what Polly and |Violet were doing and whatever Robert's parents thought of it all.

But apart from a single photograph in his uniform and an early postcard, the last thing Digory heard from Robert was a postcard that waited for him back in Dorset after it was all over.

"We have just had a brief respite from the shells and some of us came up to Antwerp for some leave. It was jolly, and we drank whisky and played piano till daybreak and slept for three days after. But it is back to the mud and the guns and the dreary trenches we go. May God save our souls and send us a quick ending to this torturous tragedy. Pray for me. Your dearest, bravely yours, ever, Robby.

That year the rains and the shells fell without mercy and trench fever caught nearly all those who were not shot down and left to twitch feebly before sinking into the cold sucking mud.

Robby's final fate was never made clear and maybe it didn't matter. Digory was inconsolable even though he had thought he had accepted the near inevitability of his own or Robert's death countless times. Most of his other friends and colleagues were also gone. The halls of the university were quieter after the war and it was a more subdued youthful cohort who began eventually to drift in.

After a period of rest in Dorset, being cosseted by Mabel, he threw himself into university and found particular interest again in Plato, in the Classical stories of Greek literature and strangely, in memories of Aslan. Digory had realised of course, who Aslan was in his own world long before, so his ironic survival of the Great War led Digory to return to church more seriously.

Whilst he found the sermons underwhelming as a rule, he found the English hymns of the people to be uplifting and deep prayer a font of great peace. They reminded him of Frank the Cabby singing hymns in the pre-dawn darkness of Narnia and this was a great solace.

…

Polly and Violet both worked in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service in the same hospitals but by the end of the war Polly had had quite enough, as has been said elsewhere. But under her slightly crazed exterior, Violet was made of sterner stuff and her experience of the war only made her keener to improve how hospitals were run. She worked tirelessly on campaigns to improve the appalling conditions for nurses and patients alike in the Asylums which were full to bursting after the end of the war and later she joined the professional union of nurses. All this took its toll and whilst Violet and Polly remained friends, the demands of their careers drew them apart into different circles and they were never so close again.

Polly settled for a smaller life but remained in close association with some of the same network of women who had supported each other through the war. Eventually, one by one, some drifted off into marriages (some quite suddenly), children and the brief renewal of the 1920s. So Polly found at the age of 33 that she was left with a mix of about ten female friends who were staunchly single and proudly independent and of relatively independent means supplemented by a little secretarial, post-office or librarian work. But several were at home nursing aging widowed mothers now and some, fathers with missing limbs and shell-shock.

The yellow brick row-house in Camden was still there and this time the drains really were a problem! Polly's mother also died late in the war. It was a particularly painful "women's problem", endometriosis, that without proper treatment made her mother go grey in front of her eyes. She had come home one day and found her mother dead in the lounge chair, a large mixed dosage of morphine and heroin and laudanum responsible. It was not unexpected. Polly had helped her mother go doctor shopping. Whilst banned for common trade at a pharmacist, under the "British System", these drugs were still available through doctors.

Polly had never loved her mother in the same way Digory had loved Mabel, but her memories of the Apple of Life from Narnia had given her pause earlier on. She had gone next door and picked bucketsful in the hope that she might coax her mother into eating the lot.

But her mother had never been partial to apples and refused all except a mouthful stewed with clove to humour her daughter. It was a lost cause anyway. The apples were extremely good for you, but they could not now bring back a mother from the threshold of death. And there was no Aslan and no desperate need beating in the heart of a young child.

Polly had moved on from her mother and now her mother had moved on from her.

So after the sorry affairs were all over, Polly now had the house to herself. She took in female boarders, all tightly interviewed of course... and employed one of them part time to keep the basic chores of the house going; dusting, and sweeping and mopping. They all chipped in and shared the cooking and cleaning up, sharing the laundry and keeping each of their rooms sorted. It was fair and it worked.

With Digory's and Mabel's permission, she did the same with the next door house when the tenants moved out and operated as its landlady. It enabled her to form the centre of a community of women which brought women of character from as far afield as North London and Whitehall, Norfolk and Wessex, and the Isle of Whyte. In one house or other they had many cups of tea and earnest discussions about such diverse topics as trade unions, animal rights, telecommunications, marriage laws, republicanism, and of course women's right to vote, which took until 1928 to finally come fully into law. It had been a very long haul and many women had lost their lives over the more than seventy seven year struggle. They celebrated by holding a pot luck dining table right in the middle of the street and roped it off and invited all the women in the row. This was their moment. No men allowed; they could watch if they liked. It was a huge success.

Once or twice even representatives of the militant Women's Social and Political Union presented to gatherings at Polly's house. Working bees to create placards and pamphlets ensued, although Polly remained aloof from some their more daring "direct action" activities.

When Digory came to London, part of the rent from the old Ketterley House paid for him to stay in a comfortable gentleman's lodge. But that was rare. His home was really in Oxford and when he was not there he was either in Dorset seeing his aging parents and seeing to estate affairs, or off on the continent gathering material for his students and his own intellectual progress.

He maintained his devotion and troth to poor dead Robby even though he knew he was not without admirers of both sexes, and truth be told, of many ages. But Digory kept a respectful distance from all intimacies and directed his primary passions into his work. It made him an enigmatic figure and a trusted one. He found that students of both sexes (for there was a growing trickle of young women through the likes of Lady Margaret Hall and St Hilda's) would share some of their deepest troubles about existence with him after the war.

And as a Professor in Ethics and Philosophy, finding (or not finding) answers to the many troubles of the world was the stuff of daily life and he helped many a student who had lost the faith in a higher power to gain wisdom through his efforts.

He had Robby's last photograph enlarged and he kept it in a plain frame in his Oxford office and there it remained until he officially retired and went home to Dorset.

...

End Note:

I recently had a comment from a guest who said: Ï don't think Digory would ever be gay". But as they were a guest, it was not possible to engage in a two way conversation about this statement.

As a gay man, I sometimes find it a little stultifying to be writing about straight (assumed) characters in this corner of fanfic land. "So don't write in fanfic!" you might retort. Ahh, but as fanfiction is meant to be a vehicle for self transformation, it actually behoves one to put ones own reality into the story, not to mention picking up themes in the story that are unexplored by the original author and putting ones own spin on them. In this case, Polly and Digory lived through two world wars. They have seen it all and this included the emerging brave new world following the end of Queen Victoria and then Edward, in which the grinding search for the equality of the sexes was an ongoing concern and the slow emergence of sexual minorities from the underground was a very real thing that got repressed again by the Nazi's, the war and many on the other side of the war fence who also did not approve. It is notable that both Digory and Polly are unmarried. There is no mention of a wife for Digory and Polly is steadfastly Miss Plummer in the final novel. It is indeed very likely that they had loves and lives that were not able to be fully made public, or indeed to come to fruition. Let's pay some respect to the same-sex-attracted people and the feminists of this time, who bravely blazed trails for the future but often had to live unfulfilled lives themselves. Let's see what Narnia can do about it.


End file.
